


writing letters home from delphi

by eneiryu



Series: we know all sorts of things we don't believe [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, POV Lydia Martin, Recovery, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 02:45:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16507883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eneiryu/pseuds/eneiryu
Summary: The second Theo wakes up from nearly dying—again—Lydia is going to kill him.





	writing letters home from delphi

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter Three of _i know all sorts of things i don't believe_ from Lydia's POV, because Lydia is awesome and just doesn't have time for half of the McCall pack's shenanigans. 
> 
> I've got a handful of other POV-switches and missing scenes conceptualized for _i know all sorts of things_ , and I'm also more than willing (nay, eager) for additional prompts.
> 
> As always, thanks to everyone who reads and comments; I love reading through them.

Lydia doesn’t have supernatural hearing, but even she can recognize Isaac’s tinny, panicked voice through Scott’s phone’s speaker.

Scott had looked baffled when he’d finally wrestled his phone out of his pocket, one hand braced on the Jeep’s steering wheel, and had seen Isaac’s name on the display. But it isn’t until a good thirty seconds into the call that he suddenly jerks the Jeep—Lydia, Stiles, and Malia all scrambling to brace themselves, horns going off all around them and Derek’s tires screeching behind them as he follows Scott’s lead—to the side of the road. Lydia, who had felt subtlely wrong since they’d left Beacon Hills, feels the bottom drop out of her stomach as she stares at the side of Scott’s face, his expression getting harder and harder as Isaac keeps talking.

And then, all at once, the twisting dread in her gut solidifies and she gasps, scrambles for the front door handle and practically throws herself out of the Jeep and onto her knees in the grassy field bordering the highway, shoves a wrist into her mouth to muffle the sound as best she can, and screams.

Somewhere underneath the overwhelming sensation of her scream, the images spooling out across her mind’s eye, she can hear Stiles yell her name, the sound of car doors getting wrenched open as the pack spills out of the Jeep and Derek’s Toyota and rushes over to her. But she can’t focus on it, barely registers it when Derek slides to his knees in front of her and wraps his arms around her, curving his body up and over hers like a shield. All she knows is the shredded sound of her own voice, the dull throb of pain from her teeth clenched around her wrist, and the waking nightmare spooling out before her, horrifying in its clinicalness.

She doesn’t know how long it takes her to stop screaming. But when she does, the pack isn’t quiet like they had been earlier, waiting for her to tell them what she saw. Instead, it’s chaos.

Stiles has his phone to his ear now too, half-in and half-out of the Jeep like he’d been trying to get to her when it’d rang. His face has paled but his expression is focused, eyes staring sightlessly into the middle-distance as he talks quickly to whoever’s on the phone, asking questions, repeating the information to Scott, who’s still on his own call. Except Stiles _isn’t_ staring into the middle-distance, Lydia realizes, he’s staring at _her_ , cradled underneath the protective cage of Derek’s body, and Lydia immediately and without a doubt knows who he must be talking to.

_Parrish_ , she thinks hazily; Parrish had felt the same thing she had.

_Oh god_ , she thinks, and shoves away from Derek so that she can turn to the side and vomit up a mouthful of bile. Derek makes a small sound and follows her forward enough that he can put a hand on her back, the tips of his fingers just low enough that they’re barely touching the skin of her back where her shirt had ridden up, and in the next instant Lydia can feel her nausea start to settle, the throbbing in her bruised wrist start to fade, as Derek takes her pain from her. She wants to tell him _thank you_ , wants to push back into his hand and let him comfort her, but her vision flashes before her eyes and she dry-heaves again.

But she’s still cognizant enough to hear it when Derek snaps, “Someone explain what the hell is going on.”

“It’s Parrish, he says something is going on back home,” Stiles tells him, just as Scott says, “Isaac was the one in Visalia, he managed to surprise a bunch of hunters who were there for him.”

But it’s Corey’s answer that causes them all to freeze, to fall silent, so silent, that Lydia can hear the quiet sound of the light breeze rustling through the grass underneath her knees, her palms. Corey had apparently received a call, too, because he’s holding his phone to his ear and staring out at them, his expression blown open and devastated.

“It’s Mason,” He says blankly, almost disbelievingly, “He says that hunters attacked your building. Mason says...He says that Theo…”

_Mason says that Theo is dead_ , Lydia fills in, and falls back onto her heels, then collapses onto the edge of her hip, her hands coming up to cover her mouth to hold back a sob. Derek’s hand falls away from her but he doesn’t notice, his expression gone rigid as he stares at Corey; he can smell the answer on him even without Corey finishing his sentence, Lydia realizes, shock or grief or _something_. Liam must be scenting the same things, because he suddenly lunges for Corey, gets his hands wrapped in Corey’s collar as he shakes him, as he demands, _Mason says what about Theo, Corey? Mason says_ what _?_

“Liam!” Derek snaps, and surges to his feet, gets an arm wrapped around Liam’s shoulders so that he can drag him back and away from Corey, Malia darting over to stand between the two of them in case Liam gets loose.

But Corey doesn’t seem to notice, just flicks his eyes up to Liam, his expression heartbreaking, “He says that Theo got him and Nolan and Alec out safely, but that he...that Theo…”

Lydia barely catches Liam’s snarled _no_ , _Mason is wrong_ , barely registers Derek’s clenched jaw and straining muscles as he digs in his heels, works to keep hold of Liam, stop him from breaking loose and lunging back at Corey. Liam twists in his grip, eyes burning golden and mouth full of fangs, his clawed fingers tearing at Derek’s restraining arm as he tries to rip it away from his body. There’s blood starting to flow from Derek’s shredded forearm but he doesn’t let go, just slips his grip up from Liam’s shoulders to his neck, a regretful but unyielding expression on his face as he starts to squeeze.

Liam keeps struggling, keeps repeating _Theo isn’t dead_ , keeps snarling _get off of me_ at Derek, keeps looking at Corey and demanding, his tone vicious, but with a hidden plea underneath, _Mason is wrong, tell Mason he’s wrong_. Corey just keeps staring at him from behind Malia’s protective stance, his face twisted with pain, his phone still held up to his ear; Lydia can hear Mason still talking, but just barely. Liam’s struggles slowly subside as Derek keeps cutting off his air, and that’s somehow the worst thing; Liam’s body going slowly limp as Derek forces him unconscious, Derek’s eyes clenching tightly shut and his mouth twisting up in an apologetic grimace as he lowers Liam to the ground.

She jumps when someone kneels next to her, her head jerking up to stare at Stiles as he reaches forward, gently, and smooths his thumbs under her eyes. Brushing away tears, she realizes; she’s been crying silently.

“Lydia…” He whispers hoarsely, clearly unsure what to say.

And Lydia can’t help herself; she meets his concerned gaze and feels more tears start to spill over her cheeks, “I saw him. I saw him, Stiles.”

“I know,” He tells her quietly, “Parrish felt it, too.”

Lydia swallows a sob and surges forward into Stiles’ chest, his arms coming around her and his head coming to rest on hers. His arms are trembling slightly and his breathing keeps hitching, and Lydia presses her forehead to his sternum and closes her eyes, tries not to see her vision of Theo lying motionless on some dirty concrete floor, his chest still, so still, and his eyes staring sightlessly upwards, his mouth and chin covered with black blood, a single bullet-hole marking the middle of his forehead.

Off somewhere to the side, Scott is saying, “No, don’t—we don’t know what’s going on in Beacon Hills. Stay in Visalia and I’ll call you once—” Scott’s voice cracks for a second, and Lydia wonders what he was going to say; _once we’ve found Theo’s body_ , maybe, “—once we clear out the hunters, secure the town.”

Then, shuffling, and Lydia glances out from underneath Stiles’ arm and through her own blurry vision to see Scott gesture to Corey, to see Corey stumble a few steps forward until he can hand over his phone.

“Mason?” Scott says once he has it in hand, “Look, we’re headed back to Beacon Hills. We’re an hour and a half out, meet us there.” He pauses, like he’s listening to Mason’s response, “What do you mean, Alec won’t?” Another pause and Lydia watches Scott as his whole body seems to bow, just seems to fold in on itself like he’s absorbing a blow, his expression spasming with pain, “ _Jesus_ , okay. Then just...just call us when you get to Yreka, okay? We’re going back. We’re going back for him.”

He hangs up and hands the phone back to Corey, and Lydia watches his face as it cycles through a whole array of emotions—grief and fury and hatred and anger and despair, too many to name, overwhelming—before finally landing on shock when he sees Derek crouched over Liam’s prone form; apparently he hadn’t fully registered that altercation, distracted as he’d been. Lydia can tell the instant he realizes what must have happened, as he tags the shredded fabric of Derek’s sleeve, soaked with red.

“God damn it,” Scott whispers hoarsely, eyes briefly falling shut. Then he heaves in another breath, seems to brace himself, “We need to leave, right now.”

Lydia pushes back from Stiles the instant Scott’s done talking, stands as gracefully as she can under the circumstances but still wobbles some, Stiles’ arms falling reluctantly away from her.

She looks at Derek, ignores the wind prickling against her wet cheeks, demands, “Give me your keys, I’ll drive your car back.” Derek opens his mouth, clearly about to ask if she’s really feeling up to that, so Lydia just talks over him, “Someone has to watch Liam, he isn’t going to be any calmer when he wakes up.”

Derek grimaces and Lydia knows she’s won; she catches the keys that Derek digs out of his pocket and tosses to her, starts heading towards his Toyota.

Behind her, she can hear Derek order, “Malia, come with us. Corey, go with Scott and Stiles.”

There’s noise behind her as everyone breaks off into their reshuffled groups, Lydia paying only the bare minimum of attention to it as Stiles informs Scott, “My dad, your dad, and Parrish are already on their way back from Redding. I’ll call Argent.”

She wrenches Derek’s back door open, holds it wide so that Derek—a few steps behind her with Liam’s unconscious form slung over his shoulder—can step forward and deposit Liam as gently as possible into the backseat. Then he climbs in after Liam, nods to her as he pulls the door shut. Lydia circles around to the driver’s side as Malia slides into the passenger seat and slams the door shut behind her.

Settled in the front seat, hands moving almost automatically as she gets the keys inserted in the car and turns the engine over, Lydia glances out of the windshield at the Jeep in time to see Corey disappear into the backseat, Stiles climbing up into the passenger seat, phone held firmly to his ear and mouth moving rapidly. She’s just thrown Derek’s Toyota into drive, ready to pull back onto the road, when Scott glances back at her and catches her gaze, halfway into the driver’s seat of the Jeep; even from twenty feet back, Lydia can see his eyes are bright red and flaring like coals.

She swallows, holding his fiercely burning gaze for a beat, and then she guns the engine, pulling Derek’s Toyota back onto the highway, ignoring the shriek of horns as she flattens her foot on the accelerator; as she gets them turned around and headed back home.

\---

Derek won’t let her or Stiles come into the warehouse with them, once they find it.

Instead he pushes Stiles up against the Jeep after Stiles attempts to follow Scott, Liam, Malia, Corey, and Argent towards the entrance—too forcefully, too aggressively, the strain of the situation bleeding through in other ways since Derek won’t let himself acknowledge it directly—and glares at him, then turns his heated gaze on her.

“Mason said these hunters are shooting to kill. You are _not_ coming inside,” He snarls, shoves Stiles back when Stiles attempts to push forward and past Derek’s restraining hand, Stiles snapping _fuck you, we’re part of this, too_ , but Derek is relentless, “I will knock the both of you out myself, I swear to god.”

Then his head jerks up and towards Scott, who’s staring back at him from the warehouse entrance, red eyes burning; Scott must have said something that only he could hear. Derek turns quickly back to Stiles and holds his gaze for a few long seconds, then turns to look at Lydia. She wants to be angry at him, wants to say _Stiles is right, this is our fight, too_ , but she can see the terror hidden just underneath Derek’s righteous anger, and she can’t bear to make it worse; she knows better than any of them what it’s like to see visions of death, after all.

“Okay,” She tells him quietly; his expression spams briefly with pain, or relief, or some combination of the two, and he nods to her, lets Stiles go and lopes towards Scott and the others, already back on the move.

Stiles watches them disappear into the warehouse, face twisted with fury, and then he wheels on her, “I’m not staying here.”

“I know,” She answers, and Stiles looks briefly surprised.

At any other time, Lydia might roll her eyes, a little insulted; seriously, do Derek and Stiles think she doesn’t know them _at all_? But it isn’t the right time—might never be the right time, depending on how the next few minutes go—and so she just breaks his gaze, starts heading for the warehouse, Stiles following her after a beat.

Initially she’s worried that she and Stiles might have trouble finding the others, but it winds up being moot. The second they come through the doors they can see them, fanned out and facing down a half-dozen or so hunters. A half-dozen or so hunters and _Monroe_ , Lydia realizes, catching sight of the woman herself standing on the other side of the room, a crumpled figure at her feet.

_We’re too late_ , Lydia thinks automatically, her entire body going cold. But then Theo coughs wetly, black blood bubbling from his lips, and her body goes hot instead. And that’s it, that’s all Scott and the others need, apparently; Corey suddenly reaches for Argent and gets a hand on him, camouflages them both a half-second before the gun in Argent’s hand _cracks_ and drops the hunter standing just next to Monroe and Theo. Scott, Malia, Derek, and Liam don’t waste the opportunity; they shift and lunge for the hunters as Argent continues to lay down covering fire, preventing the hunters from getting their guns—with their no-doubt poisoned bullets—up to shoot at the pack.

Lydia and Stiles both duck back behind a concrete pillar as some of the hunters manage to get off shots, nearly all of them going wide as Argent disables them one by one. Even through the chaos and the brief stinging slices of pain as splintered concrete flies upward, Lydia can’t help but glance around the pillar, desperate to see what’s happening.

And so she’s watching as Derek, Scott, and Malia take down the last of the hunters, as Argent and Corey reappear, both still poised to resume fighting. But she barely notices all of that; she’s too busy staring, dumbstruck, at Liam.

He’s got his mouth open in one of the most vicious snarls she’s ever seen, clawed hands out to his sides and golden eyes blazing as he faces down Monroe. She’s got a gun out and held on him but he doesn’t seem to notice, doesn’t seem to care, his whole body coiled and waiting. And then, just as she goes to fire, Liam lunges forward and closes the space between them effortlessly, takes her down and—before anyone can really register what’s happening—drives one hand down and through her sternum. Even from twenty feet away, Lydia can hear the sound of her ribs splintering.

Liam pulls his hand back, out of her chest, and the warehouse has fallen so completely silent that Lydia can hear his harsh, panting breaths as he stares down at Monroe. He seems like he can’t look away, his clawed hand still raised, poised and ready to strike again, and then Theo lets out a pained, shocky gasp and falls sideways.

Liam is up and over to him in an instant, Monroe forgotten, shouting his name and sliding the last few inches on his knees.

“Liam, don’t!” Lydia hears Derek yell, and that breaks the spell; Scott and the others rush towards Liam and Theo.

But Lydia ignores them, attention caught instead by the macabre tableau a few feet away: a metal table with wide black straps; a bubbling vat of _something_ ; and a rolling cart, filled with miscellaneous objects. She approaches it carefully, dread curdling in her gut, and looks down at its contents. There’s a handful of metal tools—measuring cups, scalpels, needles—and a pile of clear capsules, but it’s the small wooden box that catches her attention, looking as out of place as it does with its delicate craftsmanship and elegant carvings, surrounded as it is by harsh metal instruments. She touches careful and trembling fingers to it, dips one fingertip into its open contents and feels the tiny pricks of wooden splinters.

“Derek, come here,” She orders, her voice feeling disconnected from the rest of her, somehow calm even in the midst of her horror, “Smell this for me and tell me if it is what I think it is.”

Derek hurries to her side and stares down at the box, his expression twisting with fury, “Mistletoe.”

Lydia takes her hand away from the box, touches the capsules instead— _gel_ —somehow still managing to sound clinical as she says,  “She forced him to swallow splinters of mistletoe, look at these capsules—they’re gel, they dissolve in the stomach, release whatever’s inside.”

There’s appalled murmuring, and Liam’s frantic demands to Scott, but Lydia’s mind is racing, her gaze almost irresistibly sliding back to Theo. His breathing is coming too fast, too shallow, and every few seconds his whole body seems to seize, locking up for long, unbearable seconds until he collapses flat again. Lydia stares at him, blankly horrified, and thinks _we’ll never be able to get them out of him_. The splinters are too small, and anyway, his body had probably already started to dissolve them, worse as that will inevitably be; the poison spreading past his stomach and throat to the rest of his body once it does.

_Wait_ , Lydia suddenly realizes, and just as Liam shouts _we have to try something, we can’t just let him die like this_ , an idea starts to crystallize in her mind.

“I might—” She finds herself saying before she’s consciously decided to speak; she pauses, hesitant, and then looks up at Liam, who’s staring at her with naked hope in his eyes, “I have an idea.”

\---

They load Theo into the back of Derek’s Toyota, the backseat quickly folded down to make room for Derek, Liam, and Malia, all three of them with their hands on Theo as they try to manage his pain.

Scott is driving, his eyes constantly darting to the rearview mirror, his phone dropped onto the top of the dashboard, connecting him to his mother. Ms. McCall, who’d initially answered the call as a concerned parent, a mother’s intuition sensing something wrong, had slid immediately and without hesitation to _medical professional_ as Scott quickly filled her in on the situation. She’d quizzed Scott on what the pack was thinking, or tried to, anyway; eventually Scott had thrown Lydia a desperate look, sat next to him in the front seat, and Lydia had taken over, explaining her analysis of Theo’s condition and her idea of how to help him.

Lydia listens to Ms. McCall as she says, _okay, okay. Hell, that’s not even the craziest thing we’ve ever tried. I’ll...I’ll fill in David_ somehow _, we’ll be ready when you get here_ , but Lydia isn’t really focused on it. She’s too busy staring at Liam in the rearview.

He’s got Theo’s head cradled in his lap, held carefully, so carefully, between his hands, black veins running endlessly up his arms as he strokes gentle fingers over Theo’s face—probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it—and murmurs to him. Lydia can’t really hear him, but she watches his lips move in the mirror, thinks she sees him say, _don’t do this, Theo, please._ Theo’s black blood is covering Liam’s hands, his clothes, more and more as the Toyota bounces on its shocks—no matter how carefully Scott is trying to drive—and Theo coughs up more blood in response.

Lydia glances at Derek, sees him looking back at her, his expression as distressed as she’s ever seen it. Even with Liam, Derek, and Malia all taking his pain, Theo can’t seem to relax; every now and then his back bends in a painful-looking arch, his mouth falling open as he chokes on a wordless cry, his heels slipping against the fabric of the folded-down seats as he tries and fails to brace himself against the cresting pain. The last time it happens before Scott finally pulls them into a jerking stop at the back entrance of the hospital, Liam folds over and presses his forehead hard against Theo’s heaving chest, and Lydia has no trouble hearing him repeat brokenly, over and over, _please, please, please_.

Stiles pulls up with Corey in the Jeep and Argent comes to a screeching halt in his hulking SUV just as Ms. McCall and Dr. Geyer come out, Dr. Geyer looking shellshocked but singularly focused. God bless the ability of medical professionals to compartmentalize, triage; it’s clear he’s set the whole supernatural shitshow aside to deal with after the medical emergency is done. Lydia hurries out of the front seat and yells at them to follow her, leading them around to the back of the Toyota, where Scott has already opened the door.

“Dad,” Liam says brokenly when he sees Dr. Geyer, his voice cracking on the single syllable, sounding hollowed-out.

Lydia can see Dr. Geyer hesitate, stunned; learning about the supernatural is one thing, but the grisly tableau before him—Theo’s clothes torn with what were clearly bullet-wounds, his mouth and neck covered with sickly-looking black blood, and Dr. Geyer’s step-son, his hands and clothes covered with the same—is clearly overwhelming. He rallies quickly, though, instructs Liam, Derek, and Malia to get Theo out of the car.

“Can someone carry him or do we need to get a stretcher?” He asks, Ms. McCall already reaching for Theo’s wrists, peeling open his eyelids; checking his vitals.

“I’ve got him,” Derek answers shortly, and waits until Ms. McCall steps back to haul Theo up—as gently as possible—and follow Dr. Geyer back into the hospital.

Lydia and the others—well, most of them; Chris breaks off at one point to answer a call, barking out _McCall, where the hell have you been_ , as he goes, so Lydia assumes Scott’s dad is on the line—trail after them to a corner room on the sparsely-populated third floor, already half-filled with machines and other equipment. Derek gets Theo set down on the bed, Theo letting out a choked, pained noise as he does, and then steps back to allow Ms. McCall and Dr. Geyer to come forward, start prepping Theo for the transfusions, the dialysis that they’d worked out with each other and Lydia. He catches Liam as Liam tries to surge forward, Liam’s eyes fixed on Theo, his expression a rictus of pain; if he hears Derek murmuring to him, saying _you have to let them help him, you have to stay out of the way_ , Liam doesn’t give any indication.

Ms. McCall turns at one point and nearly runs into her son, stood off to the side looking powerless and frustrated by that fact. She swallows something back—probably about to snap at him—and then says, “You all have to get out of here, let us work.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Lydia can see Liam shaking his head, can hear him say, _no, I’m not going_. But following his mom’s orders, clearing out the pack so that Ms. McCall and Dr. Geyer can help Theo, that gives Scott something to do, something to focus on, and he straightens some, motions to Malia, Corey, Stiles. Lydia backs up without prompting towards the door, her eyes sliding helplessly back to Theo, then to Derek, who is unsuccessfully trying to wrestle Liam back and out of the room.

Liam digs in his heels and repeats, snarling, his eyes flaring gold and his teeth starting to lengthen, “I said I’m not going!”

Derek probably would have done something drastic, at that point—he’s clearly past his ability to be patient—but Scott beats him to it. He looks at Liam, eyes flared red, and snaps, _Liam!_ From the way Liam flinches and his shoulders hunch, Scott had put some alpha force behind his name. It doesn’t make Liam turn around, give in, but it does break his concentration enough that Derek can finish pushing him back and out of the room. Scott gives one last look to his mother, who nods at him, and then he follows Stiles, Malia, Corey, Derek, and Liam out into the hallway.

Lydia can’t go, immediately. Her mind is a whirling mess of thoughts— _I’m not a doctor, you shouldn’t trust me,_  to, _what if I’m wrong_ , and, _not again, please, not again_ —and they’re gluing her feet to the floor. Dr. Geyer ignores her, his focus entirely on Theo, but Ms. McCall pauses just long enough to come to her, put both hands on her shoulders and catch her eyes.

“Lydia, we’re going to do everything we can,” She says quietly, forcefully, “I promise, we’re going to do everything we can.”

“I know that,” Lydia tells her, and she _does_.

She does, so she goes; she has to go.

Thankfully the third floor is nearly deserted, because Liam is still fighting with Derek, with Scott, still trying to get back into the room. Lydia comes out just as Derek gets Liam pinned up against the opposite wall of the hallway, one forearm braced against his chest, Derek’s eyes burning an icy blue. Scott is right next to them, his mouth moving quickly as he obviously tries to talk Liam down, his eyes still red but less intense, somehow; less overwhelming. Stiles and Corey are standing off to the side, watching the altercation with morbid fascination, but Malia either can’t or doesn’t want to watch; she goes to a chair in the nearby waiting room and drops down into it, starts picking at her bloody nails.

It hurts Lydia in same way she can’t fully describe to watch Liam struggle against Derek’s restraining arm, try and jerk his head away from Scott’s rapid, soothing words, so after a moment she joins Malia in the waiting room, sits down delicately on the edge of the seat next to her.

Malia doesn’t say anything for a minute, just keeps scraping dried flakes of blood off her hands—rust-colored from the hunters, not black from Theo—but then all at once, she drops her hands and sits up some, glares out into the room, “I don’t understand why he keeps doing this.” She glances at Lydia, maybe sees her brow furrowing, clarifies, “Theo. Why does he always have to throw himself in front of danger alone? I thought the whole point of a pack was that you didn’t have to do that.”

The way she says that last sentence, it’s almost like someone had had to tell _her_ that, and Lydia wonders who. But she lets the thought go, meets Malia’s eyes since Malia is staring at her, clearly wanting an answer, clearly convinced that Lydia has one. And Lydia does.

She sighs, lets herself collapse back into the chair, suddenly exhausted, her head tilting back to rest against the wall, “Theo doesn’t think he’s part of the pack.”

“What?” Malia replies immediately, then adds, “That’s dumb. Of course he is.”

Lydia can’t help but smile a bit at Malia’s no-nonsense take, “I know that, and you know that, and literally _everyone else_ does, too. But Theo doesn’t.”

She tips her head to the side so that she can check on the others. Derek still has Liam pinned, but Liam’s struggles have flagged, his shoves against Derek’s arm half-hearted. Liam isn’t even looking at Derek, or Scott, as they talk to him; his gaze is still fixed on the doorway to Theo’s room, and doesn’t leave it. Lydia wonders what he’s hearing, smelling; it was bad enough having to _see_ the damage Monroe had inflicted on Theo. She can’t imagine what being able to sense it on a deeper, more intimate level is like.

She glances up when Stiles appears in her field of vision, watches him as he drops into the chair next to her, lets him take her hand. Corey takes a chair across from them and braces his elbows against his knees, his mouth against his hands; Lydia knows that Corey’s and Theo’s relationship is more complicated than most, and that conflict is clearly playing itself out inside Corey’s skull, his ribcage. He notices her attention and grimaces sympathetically, and Lydia can’t help but return it.

They sit in silence for the next five minutes, ten, until finally Scott, Derek, and Liam come over to join them, one of Derek’s hands clamped around one of Liam’s biceps, Scott behind them as a second line of defense. Derek gets Liam sat in a chair in one of the corners of the room, and then he and Scott sit on either side of him, clearly guards. Liam doesn’t pay them any attention, just closes his eyes, his whole face twisted with despair, and drops his head back with a dull _thunk_ against the wall. Chris reappears at one point, the others’ heads tilting up to listen as he fills them in on Agent McCall’s, the Sheriff’s, and Parrish’s current statuses, informs them that he’s going to head out to meet up with them, help clean up Monroe’s mess.

But Lydia can’t focus on it, can’t seem to focus on anything; she just keeps seeing Theo on that concrete floor with Monroe standing over him, keeps seeing Liam bent over him, hands wet with Theo’s blackened blood and desperately whispering to him. Lydia knows from bitter experience that it’ll be worse if she tries to fight it, so she gives in, lets the visions play across her mind’s eye like film reels, lets them wash over her. She waits for them to pass, waits for Ms. McCall and Dr. Geyer to come to give them an update, waits to find out whether or not her prediction is going to prove true after all, if an hour late and under different circumstances.

She waits.

\---

Around hour three of Theo’s treatment, when most of the pack has either passed out from strung-out exhaustion—uncomfortable hospital chairs notwithstanding—or has started staring at the off-white walls in a sort of blank fugue, Alec, Nolan, and Mason finally stumble in.

It’d taken Scott twenty minutes on the phone with Alec, and another fifteen talking to Shohreh, to convince them to return to Beacon Hills. Lydia had stirred some when Scott had first made the call after he and Derek had gotten Liam settled, Scott standing near the doorway to one of the empty rooms in a half-hearted and somewhat misguided attempt not to disturb the rest of the pack. She’d listened as he’d explained to Alec what had happened, tried to coax him into coming back; whatever Theo had told him, whatever Theo had made him promise, Alec had clearly been clinging to it, and Lydia had watched Scott’s face twist with sympathy as he’d talked with Alec patiently, so patiently.

At some point Shohreh must have taken the phone, because the quality of Scott’s voice—and his posture, his back suddenly going ramrod-straight—had changed, and he’d repeated what he’d told Alec, but far more clinically. It’d been fascinating once Lydia had realized what was going on, Scott repeating certain claims multiple times: _Monroe is dead, Beacon Hills is secure_ , _Theo’s condition is critical but he’s still alive_ ; Shohreh had been listening for a lie, trying to hear if Scott had been making the call under duress. But eventually she must have been satisfied, because Scott had sagged and breathed out, _okay, Alec, we’ll see you soon,_ and hung up.

Scott rockets to his feet when Nolan, Mason, and Alec first appear, Alec behind Nolan and Mason like he’s trying to keep them in sight. Corey is slower to his feet but makes up for it, rushing past Scott to Mason and wrapping him in a bone-crushing hug, Mason’s arms coming around him just as tightly. Liam—allowed to stand but watched closely by Derek—gets ahold of Nolan, and Malia, Stiles, Derek, and Scott all surround them.

Lydia just stays seated and watches.

Everyone seems to write off talking to Mason as something of a loss, Corey taking hold of his head and kissing him with a barely-restrained desperation that clenches something in Lydia’s chest. But they don’t even have to press Nolan; he leans back from Liam, his expression, his whole demeanor just cracking open, and the story just comes pouring out of him. Scott eventually cuts him off as Nolan’s voice gets more and more ragged, saying _it’s okay, Nolan, stop, it’s okay_ , pulling Nolan into him, one hand moving to cover the jagged white scar on his neck as Nolan buried his face in Scott’s shoulder and just started to shake.

But it’s Alec that catches her attention, keeps it. He stands a handful of steps away from the others, his whole posture tense, so tense, and he keeps jerking, jolting, as small sounds—closing doors, the chime of the elevator—seem to set him off. His claws stay sheathed and his mouth stays clenched, so Lydia doesn’t think his teeth become fangs, but his eyes have a muted glow to them that he can’t seem to quell.

And he can’t stop checking on Mason or Nolan, his eyes constantly flicking to them, no matter how much he seems to want to give Mason and Corey their privacy, let Scott and the others comfort Nolan.

_God damn it, Theo_ , Lydia thinks; she knows it isn’t fair, but god _damn it_.

Then she realizes that it’s not just Mason and Nolan that keep drawing Alec’s eyes; it’s Liam’s hands, his clothes, Derek’s forearm. Lydia blinks some, suddenly realizing that not a one of them had had the presence of mind to clean up; Liam is still covered in Theo’s black blood and Derek’s sleeve, his right arm, is stained rust-red from when he’d had to restrain Liam. And that’s not even mentioning Scott or Malia, whose hands are also still streaked with dried blood from their fight with the hunters. All of them look like horror movie rejects, and it’s clearly not helping defuse Alec’s ramped-up anxiety.

“Jesus,” Lydia mutters, suddenly and—admittedly—irrationally furious.

She pushes up out of her chair and leaves the pack where they are, ignores Stiles watching her with a furrowed brow and ducks into an empty room, finds a paper towel dispenser and yanks out a thick stack, takes one of the plastic cups kept on the counter and fills it up with water. She comes back out with her supplies, gets them set down on one of the waiting room end tables, and snaps Derek’s name. His head jerks up and he stares at her—as do the rest of the pack, but Lydia doesn’t acknowledge them—but then he sees the paper towels and seems to realize the same thing she had, grimacing down at his forearm, and pads over to her.

Lydia dips one of the paper towels into the water, yanks it back when Derek tries to take it from her—ignoring his initial confused expression and its subsequent softening—and takes hold of his arm when he offers it to her. She pushes his ruined sleeve up and out of the way, then starts rubbing the paper towel over his skin, slowly but steadily cleaning the blood off. Derek’s gaze burns against the top of her head but Lydia keeps her eyes on his arm, on her work, dropping one crumpled and rust-stained paper towel onto the end table and wetting another, until finally Derek’s arm is as clean as she’s going to be able to make it.

“Lydia,” He murmurs quietly, but Lydia doesn’t want to hear it, whatever it may be.

“You need to go find everyone clean clothes,” She interrupts him bluntly, dropping his arm.

He studies her face for a beat, but eventually he just says, “Okay.”

He hesitates like he’s going to say something else, but when Lydia just continues to ignore him, gesturing to Malia to come over, he lets it go. Lydia can see him out of the corner of her eye as she starts to dab at Malia’s hands, Malia sticking both of them out in front of her to give Lydia access without question or comment; he says something quiet to Scott and Stiles, then heads down the hallway and into the stairwell. Something in her chest twists uncomfortably as he disappears from sight but Lydia ruthlessly smothers it, just keeps rubbing at Malia’s skin. Eventually the rest of the pack slowly drift over to her as well, Scott and Liam wetting paper towels to clean their own hands.

Corey, who’d camouflaged Argent during the fighting but hadn’t directly attacked any of the hunters, his hands and arms clean, just drops back into a seat, Mason tucked protectively under one arm even with the awkward barrier of the arms of their chairs between them. Alec stays where he’d been, still practically vibrating with tension, and he jumps when Nolan reaches out a tentative hand to touch his arm. He jerks away harshly, instinctively, but when Nolan recoils, Alec’s whole face breaks open for a moment, panicked. Lydia watches as he reaches out for Nolan, as Nolan takes the obvious invitation after a split-second’s worth of hesitation and steps into Alec’s embrace, let’s Alec wrap his arms around him tightly.

_Good_ , she thinks, watching as some of the muscles in Alec’s shoulders start to loosen, his posture losing some of its rigidness as he squeezes his eyes shut tightly and presses his temple to Nolan’s.

She’s jerked back to herself by Scott, who reaches down to gather up the used paper towels and tells her, softly, sincerely, “Thanks for that.”

She doesn’t respond, just looks back at Alec and Nolan, flicks a glance at Mason half-buried underneath Corey’s arm, tells Scott, “You should take them in to see him.” Scott’s brow furrows, clearly about to remind her about his mother’s orders, so Lydia shakes her head, “I don’t mean let them stay, or let them get in the way. But they need it. The last time they saw him he’d been shot four times with poisoned bullets and was surrounded by a dozen pissed-off hunters.”

_They thought he was dead_ , she doesn’t remind him, but from the way Scott flinches at her words, she doesn’t need to. He pads over to a nearby trashcan and dumps the used paper towels into it, then ducks quickly into Theo’s room—double-checking with his mother, Lydia assumes—and then comes back out and says, softly, _Mason, Nolan, Alec, c’mon_. Their heads all snap up, still clearly on-edge, but when Scott tilts his head towards Theo’s room they immediately move to follow him, Alec and Nolan breaking apart and Mason scrambling up from underneath Corey’s arm. Lydia watches as Scott waves them into the room, his mouth moving; probably telling them to be careful, stay back and out of the way.

Liam looks after them with a look of poorly-disguised longing on his face, but he doesn’t move to follow. Malia must feel bad for him because she nudges him, wets one of the remaining paper towels and starts scrubbing at a streak of blood up the back of Liam’s wrist that he must have missed; she isn’t exactly gentle about it but there’s a meticulousness to the way she moves that says she’s maybe trying to be. Liam’s expression twists as he stares at her bent head and Lydia has to look away, suddenly.

It means she ends up looking at Stiles, who had come to stand at her side, his face a weird mix of hesitation and stubbornness, “You okay?” He asks quietly.

“Fine,” She answers shortly.

He frowns at her, “You’re lying.”

Lydia can’t help it; she rolls her eyes, snaps, “Don’t ask stupid questions if you don’t want stupid answers.”

Not that long ago Stiles probably would have recoiled from her at that, but now—now he just looks at her steadily and says, lowering his voice like that’s somehow going to prevent supernatural eavesdropping, even though Malia and Liam are less than three feet away and don’t even need their enhanced senses to hear him, “This wasn’t your fault.”

Lydia feels her mouth twist up in a scoff and she jerks her head away from him, staring instead out into the empty hallway. Stiles makes a noise and reaches for her and Lydia _can’t_ ; she steps back and then turns and stalks away towards the empty room that she’d taken the paper towels from, knows even before she catches the sound of his footsteps that Stiles is going to follow her. He shuts the door behind himself and Lydia finds some of her irritation with him cracking at the gesture—at his immediate and judgement-free acceptance of what she’d wanted, needed—though she still crosses her arms tightly over her chest, glares at him from a few feet away.

“It wasn’t,” Stiles repeats firmly, like she hadn’t interrupted him.

“If it wasn’t for my prediction, we never would have left Theo on his own to protect the town,” Lydia counters waspishly, “Monroe played me like a cheap instrument, and now he might die because of it.”

“Your prediction was right, Monroe was going after Isaac. No one could have known that he was going to rescue himself,” Stiles argues back, “And Theo is already doing a lot better. He’s not—he’s not out of the woods _yet_ , but…”

“ _But_ we’re trying a complete hail-mary, treating a supernatural with human medicine like we have any idea what we’re doing,” Lydia finishes for him frigidly.

And it’s worse than that, even, because she really should have said, _like_ I _have any idea what I’m doing_ ; Ms. McCall and Dr. Geyer may have refined Lydia’s initial idea, but the genesis was hers.

“Yeah, so when he wakes up, he can thank you for saving his life,” Stiles retorts, and his own temper is starting to kick in; Lydia has learned to recognize the signs now, sees it in his flushed cheeks.

“ _If_ he wakes up. You don’t know that he’s going to live,” Lydia snaps, and even as she says it she doesn’t know what she’s doing, why she’s fighting Stiles so hard.

“And you don’t know that he’s going to die!” Stiles nearly shouts back; he immediately winces at his own volume, talks softer when he adds, “Don’t do this to yourself, don’t put this on you.”

“Why not?” She snaps back, “Any way you look at it, Theo only had to sacrifice himself because I convinced all of you we had to run off to the other end of the state for a—a— _bad feeling_.”

“Because this isn’t about you,” Derek suddenly interrupts, and Lydia’s gaze jerks around to stare at him, framed in the open doorway; she has no idea when he’d shown up, “We can argue all day about whether there was another way for Theo to get the others out, but he did what he thought he had to and he saved their lives. Don’t take that away from him.”

Lydia stares at him, speechless, her chest twisting painfully at his words. All her righteous anger splinters and reveals the terror she’d been trying to hide underneath it, that she’d been refusing to acknowledge, and she brings her hands up to her mouth as tears begin to spill down her cheeks again.

“Derek, if he dies…” She whispers, then has to stop.

“I know, Lydia,” He answers quietly.

And he does. Few people know better than Derek that sometimes it’s not just easier to accept blame rather than admit helplessness; sometimes it’s self-preservation.

This time when Stiles steps forward to take her in his arms, she lets him; just buries her face in his shoulder and lets him. Derek comes forward, too, slides one hand around her back and presses his face to her hair, and she knows without looking—knows from experience now, from long familiarity—that he’s slid his other hand up and around to cup the back of Stiles’ neck, can feel it when Stiles takes one hand from her back to clench it in the fabric of Derek’s shirt.

They stay like that for long enough that Lydia stops shaking. When she pulls back Stiles smiles softly, crookedly at her, before reaching forward with the hand he’d had around her to swipe his thumb gently under her eyes. Then he leans forward and kisses her tenderly on the forehead, rests his own there for a minute. When he pulls back, Derek tips his head to nose gently but insistently at her cheek until she turns her head, lets him kiss her softly.

Lydia pulls back after a few seconds and smiles some when she notices his shirt, “You found everyone clothes.”

She doesn’t say _I’m sorry_ , and she won’t, and all of them know it. But Derek just rubs his thumb soothingly across her back and turns to press his lips to the corner of Stiles’ mouth, kisses him properly when Stiles turns into it.

Then he pulls back, rests his forehead against Stiles’ temple for a moment, “Target down the road. We’re not going to win any fashion contests, but we at least don’t all look like we just fled a murder scene.”

_Though technically we did_ , he doesn’t add, though it’s there in the resulting silence; Lydia has to swallow back an inappropriate laugh. Instead she takes a half-step forward until she can bump into him, lean into his side when he acquiesces to her silent request and wraps his arm more tightly around her.

They step back out into the waiting room a few minutes later. Alec, Nolan, and Mason are back out of Theo’s room and clustered together in a group of chairs, Mason back under Corey’s arm and Nolan next to him with one hand clasped tightly around Alec’s; they all look a little better, a little more settled. Scott looks up as they reappear, once again in his previous chair, half-blocking Liam into the corner. His smile is a little uncertain but it smooths out when he sees whatever look is on Stiles’ face; their weird life-long-friendship pseudo-telepathy kicking in. Derek takes the chair on Liam’s other side and Stiles drops beside him and next to Malia, grins at Malia when she squints at him.

But Lydia doesn’t sit, just looks at Liam, who once again has his head tilted back against the wall, eyes closed. He’s wearing the clean clothes that Derek had brought, sweats and a plain white shirt, and Lydia doesn’t know what it is—the clothes, his exhausted, cracked open expression—but he looks heartbreakingly young, and heartbreakingly vulnerable. That he’d apparently returned to his temporary prison without argument or resistance—even sequestered in the empty room, Derek would have heard it and gone out to help—makes it worse.

And so Lydia has to go look, just once. She turns on her heel and walks slowly to Theo’s room and stops in the doorway, doesn’t cross the threshold, just rests one hand on the jamb and looks in at him.

There’s an oxygen mask over his face, and an IV needle taped to one of his arms, and additional rubber tubing snakes under his blankets, connected to the bank of machines next to his bed. He still looks terrible, pale and drawn and somehow _less_ than he usually does, but the sickly black blood is gone and his breathing is easier, the heart monitor next to his bed steady in its rhythms.

Dr. Geyer and Ms. McCall are both there, Ms. McCall in the room’s permanent armchair and Dr. Geyer sat in one of the chairs that he’s clearly dragged in from the waiting room. They glance up at her when she appears in the doorway from where they’d been carefully watching Theo; there’d been a few emergencies earlier, Theo essentially seizing, and they’re obviously on alert for any similar signs, though they seem a little more relaxed than the last time Lydia had seen them. They’re relaxed enough, in fact, that Ms. McCall unfolds a bit from the chair and tips her chin in an obvious invitation.

“You can come in,” She offers, her voice croaking a little.

But Lydia just shakes her head, says, “No, I don’t...I just needed— _wanted_ —to see…”

She trails off, and there’s an uncomfortable amount of sympathetic understanding in Ms. McCall’s gaze when she replies softly, “Okay.”

She settles back in her chair, attention once more on Theo, and leaves Lydia standing silently in the doorway. _Okay, you’ve seen him_ , Lydia tells herself firmly. Or she tries to, anyway; she can’t seem to tear her eyes away from the steady rise and fall of Theo’s chest, can’t stop listening for the quiet _beeps_ of his heart monitor, every inhale, every exhale, every _beep_ replacing her visions of Theo’s still chest, his bloody mouth and sightless eyes and marred forehead. So she rests her temple against the cool metal of the door jamb and watches him, breathing; she wraps one hand around the edge of the door jamb and listens to his heart, beating.

She just watches, and she just listens.

\---

It takes six hours and several rounds of transfusions and dialysis, but at three o’clock in the morning Ms. McCall and Dr. Geyer come out to the waiting room and tell them, voices hoarse but triumphant, that Theo is going to make it.

Liam tries to rocket to his feet when he sees them coming but Scott and Derek are faster, clamp their hands over his wrists on the arms of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs and keep him pinned down. Lydia’s confused for a half-second until she sees his eyes, the tips of his fingers; they must have sensed him losing control of the shift. The contact seems to jolt Liam out of it and he slumps, his head dropping low on a suddenly boneless neck; his claws disappear, and when he looks up, his eyes are their usual, human color. Scott and Derek let him up, then.

Dr. Geyer watches the whole exchange with a look on his face like he’s feeling tectonic plates shifting beneath his feet. Or, Lydia thinks—watching as Liam bites his lip and slowly stands but doesn’t approach, like maybe he’s afraid he isn’t welcome—like maybe the plates had _already_ shifted, and he’s just now feeling the quakes. But he sees his step-son hesitating and he just says _what is wrong with you, get over here_ and Liam practically launches himself into his step-father’s arms, buries his face in his chest.

Most of the pack looks away respectfully but Lydia doesn’t. She’s too drained, and too curious, and it’s too goddamn late on the second night that Theo has made her watch him die; she keeps her eyes on them and doesn’t color or look away when Dr. Geyer catches her gaze. He narrows his eyes thoughtfully at her, and for a moment Lydia thinks he’s going to say something, but in the next instant Liam pulls back and Dr. Geyer glances down to smile softly at him.

Dr. Geyer looks up but keeps an arm around his step-son, “Theo will need another few rounds over the next couple of hours, but then, based on the progress we’ve seen so far, his healing should be able to take over.”

He gets this look on his face when he says _healing_ like he can’t believe what he’s saying, but powers through it regardless. Lydia can’t help but smirk at him; _welcome to the club._ He gives her a dry look—they’ve had this whole speaking conversation without uttering a word, Dr. Geyer really _is_ adapting quickly—and then he turns to the rest of the room.

“You guys can go in and see him now, but try to keep it to two or three at a time, okay? We can’t sedate him like we usually would and he needs the rest to finish recovering,” He tells them.

Lydia can see Scott going to open his mouth out of the corner of her eye, clearly about to take charge of the visiting schedule, but she beats him to it, announces, “Liam and I will go first.”

Everyone in the room turns to look at her—Scott and most of the others in confusion, Derek knowingly, Dr. Geyer appraisingly—but it’s Liam’s reaction that gets her. The naked vulnerability on his face, the undisguised _gratitude_ ; Lydia ignores both and the twist of feeling the sight evokes in her chest, rises gracefully to her feet and then raises a challenging eyebrow at the room, waiting. Scott looks between her, then to Liam, then to Derek, like he’s trying to decide if he should protest—still obviously worried about Liam’s earlier behavior—and Lydia considers what she might do if he tries to insist on accompanying, or going with Liam in her stead; it’ll end poorly for him if he does, she decides.

She’s gearing up to say something cutting as the silence drags, something about how Scott is Liam’s alpha, not his jailor, and maybe he should try remembering that, but Ms. McCall—maybe sensing the oncoming storm—intercedes.

“I’ll take you,” She says firmly, shooting her son a warning look.

Scott gapes at her for a moment and then he just throws up his hands and says _okay_ , his expression and tone absolutely bewildered. Liam looks up at his dad—who smiles at him in encouragement—and then steps away from him, following the gentle pressure of Ms. McCall’s hand on his arm. They pass Lydia on their way to Theo’s room but she doesn’t move yet, just meets Scott’s assessing stare unflinchingly and then—slowly, deliberately—turns her back on him and heads for Theo’s room.

When she gets there, Ms. McCall is hanging back by the doorway, her gaze focused on Liam, who seems to have gotten halfway to Theo lying pale and quiet in the hospital bed before freezing. Ms. McCall glances at Lydia as she steps inside, one corner of her mouth quirking up in a sympathetic grimace; Lydia gives her a soft smile and puts a hand on her arm—a silent _thank you_ , for the last thirty seconds and the last six hours both—and goes to stand by Liam’s side. Liam turns his head to look up at her, his expression twisted up and blown open, his whole body practically vibrating with tension; he so clearly wants to close the rest of the distance between him and Theo and is so clearly terrified to do it—the knowledge of his own, frequent losses of control throughout the night obviously eating at him—that Lydia’s heart clenches.

“C’mon,” She tells him quietly, and puts a hand on his back to gently but firmly encourage him forward.

“No, I shouldn’t...my dad said—” Liam tries to protest, but Lydia is carefully relentless, and Liam so clearly wants what she’s giving him permission to do that he lets her push him stumbling the rest of the way to Theo’s bedside.

Once there, Lydia lets him go but picks up one of his hands, starts to tug it towards Theo’s lying slack on the bed but then stops, looks over her shoulder at Ms. McCall. But Ms. McCall just nods in encouragement, so Lydia turns back to Liam and Theo and finishes reaching out, pulls Liam’s hand that she still has held in her own forward until she can place Liam’s hand on top of Theo’s. Liam’s fingers spasm around Theo’s and Theo’s brow furrows; Liam notices immediately and goes to pull his hand back like he’s been burned, so Lydia catches it, puts it back.

“It’s okay, Liam,” She tells him, then looks back over her shoulder at Ms. McCall for confirmation.

“She’s right, Liam, it’s okay,” Ms. McCall echoes, her eyes on Lydia’s.

And that’s it, that does it; Liam swallows loudly and steps the rest of the way forward on his own, brings his other hand up to clasp it around Theo’s hand, too. His eyes are fixed on Theo’s sleep-slack face, still half-covered with an oxygen mask—Ms. McCall and Dr. Geyer trying to supplement Theo’s abilities as best they can, make it easier for his body to heal—but it doesn’t seem to bother him, and Lydia realizes that he must be reaching out with his other senses, assuring himself of Theo’s recovery through smell and hearing, too. It’s an intensely intimate moment and Lydia suddenly feels caught, voyeuristic, and she steps back quickly, retreats until she’s standing back by Ms. McCall; Liam doesn’t seem to notice.

They stand there in silence for a long minute, and then Ms. McCall tips her head towards Lydia and says quietly, “I know the others have questions, I’m going to go help Dr. Geyer answer them.”

Lydia nods mutely and doesn’t move as Ms. McCall quietly leaves, though she wonders if she should. She’d come in here with Liam primarily to stop Scott from being able to, to give Liam a chance to see Theo without feeling like some kind of dangerous wild animal, but she’s not sure she’s done any better than Scott would’ve; she thinks of her earlier, unspoken criticism of Scott and feels an uncomfortable prick of potential hypocrisy as she stands and watches Liam like some kind of babysitter.

But before she can make up her mind either way, Liam glances at her over his shoulder, his hands still wrapped gently around Theo’s, “What were you going to say to Scott before?”

Lydia stares at him for a moment, thought process derailed by his question, then says, “What makes you think I was going to say anything?”

But Liam’s lips just flicker in a small smirk, “You had this look on your face.”

Lydia bites back a smile, some of the heaviness of the room dissipating, most of the tension gone from Liam’s body, his expression, Liam seemingly now grounded by his hands held around Theo’s, “I was going to remind him that he’s your alpha, not your jailor.”

Liam bites his lip, the corners of his mouth quirking and his eyes crinkling, clearly touched, “Thanks. I know he means well, but...thanks.” He glances back down at Theo and his expression sobers, some, “And not just for that. For...for everything.”

Lydia’s immediate instinct is to brush it off, uncomfortable with the raw honesty in Liam’s voice, his statement too much like a confession for the usual tenor of their relationship. But she looks at his hands clasped around Theo’s, the way that Theo had at some point tilted his head to face Liam—like even recovering from a near-death experience and unconscious, Theo is still constantly searching Liam out—and stops herself.

“You’re welcome,” She answers instead, simply..

Liam gives her another quick smile and turns back to Theo, strokes his thumbs gently across Theo’s hand a few more times, and then carefully releases it. Lydia’s brow furrows and she’s about to protest, tell him he can take as long as he likes, but he preempts her.

“Alec, Nolan, and Mason need to see him like this, too,” He explains quietly, meeting her eyes as he does, “It’s hard to explain, I know you can’t sense them the same way, but…”

“I get it,” Lydia cuts in, and doesn’t bother to correct him, to share her own observations: more subjective and less informed by biology and objective fact, maybe, but; she gets it.

“I’ll come back once everyone else has had a chance to see him,” He continues, more like he’s promising that to himself than speaking to her.

Lydia just nods and waits quietly as he nonetheless takes another minute to watch Theo’s sleeping form before he finally pivots on his heel and heads for the door. She follows him back to the waiting room, which falls silent as they reappear, everyone’s eyes on them. Catching the way that Alec’s, Mason’s, and Nolan’s gazes immediately fly to Liam, their eyes searching his face, Lydia can’t help but give Liam more credit than she had, initially; he was clearly right that the three of them need to see Theo, too, and she feels a swell of affection—of respect—rise in her chest as she watches Liam grin widely at them, deliberately playing up his relief so that they can see it, react to it.

Scott must sense the same things or he’d previously come to the same conclusion, because he nods to Alec, Nolan, and Mason, smiles, “Go ahead, guys.”

Mason gives Corey’s cheek a quick kiss and starts heading towards Theo’s room, and Nolan—Nolan reaches for Alec’s hand and laces his fingers through it, gives Alec a quick smile when Alec looks at him in surprise, and starts tugging him to follow. They disappear into Theo’s room just as Stiles purposefully bumps into Lydia’s side, sags against her some with his face half-buried in her hair; part of it is Stiles’ way of reacting to the insanity of the night, wanting to be close and being kind of obnoxious about it because he’s, well, _himself_ , but part of it is just straight-up exhaustion.

The rest of the pack is in about the same state, all swaying on their feet from a combination of relief and fatigue, like now that they know Theo is going to make it, the tangled mess of emotions and stresses they’d all been ignoring are finally pushing their way to the fore. Scott looks around at all of them and Lydia’s familiar enough with him now—and Scott’s so exhausted and so unable to keep his thoughts off his face—that watching him slip into alpha-mode is like watching a film play out.

But just before he goes to speak he stops and darts a quick look at her, clearly wary, and Lydia bites back a laugh, a little inappropriately amused. When Scott notices his expression crinkles up with restrained laughter, too—like he’s laughing at himself—and whatever tension may have snapped taut between the two of them earlier breaks, fades away, and he smiles quickly at her before turning back to the others.

“I know no one is going to like it, but I think now that my mom and Liam’s dad are sure that Theo is going to make it—” He hesitates and glances at them, then continues when they nod in confirmation, “—after everyone has a chance to see him, I think we should take a few hours to clean up, eat something, get some sleep.”

Ms. McCall cuts in before the resulting swell of dissatisfied rumbling can crest, “Scott’s right. Theo is going to be out for another few hours, minimum, and all of you are practically dead on your feet. Take a few hours to recover and then come back. We can let you know if he wakes up earlier than expected.”

Lydia can see the warring desires to take Ms. McCall’s suggestion and to stay near Theo writ plainly across the faces of the loosely circled pack, which is proof positive that Ms. McCall and Scott are right and they should all take some time to reset. But she’s also willing to bet that they’re all thinking the same thing that she is; that running off and leaving Theo all but alone is how they ended up in this mess, and as useless as the post-hoc waiting room vigil might be to make up for it, it’s at least _some_ kind of penance. She’s about to speak, offer an alternative—maybe Ms. McCall could find an empty room, and they could go pick up some of the air mattresses from the McCall house—when Scott continues.

“I’ll stay,” He offers, though what Lydia hears underneath his statement is a little more fierce, a little more guilty; _I’m not going anywhere this time_ , “I’ll keep everyone updated on his condition, let everyone know the second he wakes up.” Then the corner of his mouth kicks up in a small grin, and he adds, “Besides, you know that the second he wakes up, he’s going to mock us all mercilessly for hovering over his unconscious body for hours instead of doing the sensible thing and just coming back when he’s awake.”

That’s the root of the problem, actually—Theo’s glaringly malnourished sense of self-worth—and from the way that the humor in Scott’s eyes is more than a little bitter, he knows it. But the reminder of Theo’s likely reaction—and the reminder that he is, in fact, going to wake up—seems to help; everyone—including Mason, Nolan, and Alec, returned from Theo’s room and rejoining the rest of the pack quietly—trade a few glances, but it’s clear from their suddenly-unwound body language that Scott has won.

Lydia feels a careful touch on her arm and looks over at Derek, who tells her quietly, “I’m going to take Stiles and go see Theo, and then we’ll head back to my place, alright?”

Lydia nods at him, looking up to give Stiles a quick smile when he groans and pulls back from her, watches for a long moment as he and Derek head towards Theo’s room. Then she turns back, vaguely overhearing it as various pack members debate transportation options—they’ve only got the Jeep, Derek’s Toyota, and Theo’s truck between the lot of them—but her attention is caught by Liam, who bites his lip and says Scott’s name softly.

Scott turns to look at him, and Liam continues quietly, “I’m not going.” Liam must see Scott’s shoulders sag in frustration or his expression start to fall because he keeps talking, “I’ll stay out of the way, I’ll do whatever you want me to, but I’m not leaving.”

Lydia can feel her own shoulders start to tense, prepared to intervene, but in the next instant she’s caught by the way that Scott stops, really looks at Liam. His frustration bleeds away almost instantly, replaced with a heart-wrenching sort of understanding, and after a few false starts—Scott opening his mouth, touching his tongue to his lip, then closing it again—he nods.

“Okay,” Scott tells him.

Lydia doesn’t even need supernatural senses to catch the way that the tension in Liam breaks, the relief that rolls through him. He meets Scott’s eyes and smiles, and it’s a little wobbly, but it’s there, and it’s grateful, and it holds. Scott returns it and then reaches forward to snag Liam, pull him in for a rough hug; Lydia can’t hear what he says, his mouth next to Liam’s ear, but she can take a few informed guesses, and she can’t help her own soft smile watching them.

Then she catches sight of Alec, stood a few feet away from Liam and Scott, clearly with something to say. Scott must see him too because he lets Liam go—clapping him once on the shoulder—and turns to give Alec his full attention.

“I’m not going, either,” Alec starts, “I gave Theo’s keys to Mason, Corey, and Nolan so they can get home, and they’re going to take Malia, too. But I’m staying.” Scott goes to open his mouth and Alec must think he’s going to protest, though Lydia doubts it, because Alec hurries onward, “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be difficult, but you weren’t _there_ , Scott. You didn’t...you didn’t see him after he’d been shot, you didn’t _smell_ him. When he made me promise...when he went down as we were escaping…”

Alec’s hand goes to the back of his neck in a seemingly unconscious gesture, and from the way that Mason’s and Nolan’s eyes snap to it immediately, the way that their expressions spasm with pain, there’s some significance to that, but Alec doesn’t continue. He just looks at Scott, expression almost pleading.

Lydia can see the way that Scott’s mouth is trying to twist up in a grimace, but he manages to keep most of it off his face as he says, “That’s fine, Alec. You don’t have to go.”

Alec seems to sag with relief, his head bobbing in a loose nod. He turns back to Nolan, Mason, and Corey and says something to them quietly, but Lydia misses whatever it is; Stiles and Derek reappear from Theo’s room, snagging her attention. Stiles has always been an open book and he wears his relief at Theo’s improvement in the easy swing of his limbs, the way that he claps his hands on Scott’s shoulders and shakes him a bit, grinning widely. It’s Derek’s loosened posture, the softening of his usual hard expression, that really drives home the point that it’s _over_ ; that Theo is alive, and Monroe is dead, and the pack is safe. That they’ve _made it_ , somehow. She finds herself smiling helplessly at Derek as he finishes approaching her, as he takes her face between both of his hands and kisses her, her hands coming up to hold his wrists tightly in return.

After a few long seconds he pulls back from her a half-inch but no further, smiles softly and effortlessly shifts his balance to accommodate Stiles when Stiles drapes himself over his back. He keeps his gentle hold of her and turns his face some into Stiles’, then says, “Let’s go home.”

Lydia squeezes his wrists gently, smiles, “Let’s.”

\---

Lydia is stood washing her face in Derek’s bathroom half an hour later, her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail and her skin prickling with goosebumps in the chill air of Derek’s apartment, legs bare underneath the shirt she’d stolen from him to wear to sleep. She’s patting her face dry with a towel and idly listening to Stiles as he bangs around in the kitchen downstairs, when she looks up and realizes that Derek is leaned against the doorway, watching her. She meets his eyes briefly but doesn’t say anything, just finishes drying her face and then folds the towel neatly and sets it on the counter.

Derek—likely in recognition of the fact that she’s both willing and able to out-silence him—watches her for a few seconds longer and then says what he’d clearly been waiting for the opportunity to say.

“Back at the warehouse...” He starts.

He pauses, jaw clenching, and Lydia sighs and drops her hands onto the counter, then turns to look at him over her shoulder, “Derek.”

But he’s not willing to let it go, “You told me you’d wait outside.”

It’s clear from the overly-still way he’s holding himself against the doorway that he’s actually pretty upset; he’s not as obvious as Stiles, who wears his every emotion on his face, or as expressive as Liam, who nearly always couples _anger_ with _action_ , but there’s a wire-tight tension to his muscles that gives it away. Lydia bites her lip and turns back to the sink, drops her head down between her planted arms for a moment and then turns to lean back against the counter and face him.

“There was no way that you were going to let us come inside, and there was no way that Stiles was going to wait outside, and none of us had time to argue about it,” Lydia tells him bluntly; it’s not an apology, and it’s not even really an explanation, it’s just the _truth_ , “I told you both what you needed to hear.”

Derek studies her for a few long moments, jaw working, and then he sighs and drops his head on a suddenly boneless neck. When he glances up at her from under his ducked brow, his expression is a little rueful, a little resigned, his anger cracking and bleeding out of him, “And let me guess—you’re not sorry.”

Lydia can’t help the smile that pulls up her lips, crinkles the corners of her eyes, a swell of fond affection blooming in her chest at his quiet acceptance, understanding, “Not even a little bit.”

He bites his lip in a mostly-futile effort to control his own smile and then seems to give up, takes the few steps forward that he needs to in order to get his hands around her face and kiss her. She tips her head up into it, opens her mouth when he touches his tongue to the seam of her lips, lets him lick inside.

From the easy way the kiss starts, Derek almost definitely meant it to be quick, punctuation almost; a definitive end to their mutually agreed-upon desire to avoid a fight that neither of them would win. But it’s been a long night for him, too—much as he’d fought to keep that from showing in order to help keep the others calm—but he _likes_ Theo, likes his sharp intelligence and sharper tongue and the way that he’ll put himself between the people he cares for and the darker corners of the world without thought or hesitation. Lydia doesn’t have supernatural senses like most of the others but she has _eyes_ , and more relevantly, has spent so much time wrapped in and around Derek over the past few months that she knows how to read him, no matter how hard he tries to hide.

Derek had spent the time between Mason’s call and their recovery of Theo at the warehouse thinking that Theo was already dead, terrified that Lydia or Stiles might be next. He’d spent the ride to the hospital panicked that Theo would die right there in the back of Derek’s car even with Derek helping Liam and Malia to take as much of his pain as possible, and he’d had to spend the long hours waiting, waiting with the rest of them to see if Dr. Geyer and Ms. McCall could pull off a miracle. It’d been a long night for all of them and it’d been a long night for Derek, and even Derek—born-wolf, survivor Derek—can only take so much.

So when she feels his fingers tighten briefly on her face, catches the way he makes an aborted movement towards her, like he’d been about to press her back against the counter before forcibly stopping himself, she pulls back from him briefly. She meets his eyes, sees the curiosity there—and buried further underneath it, carefully banked, the hunger—and so she reaches a hand forward until she can cup his half-hard cock in her palm through his sweats. Derek’s eyes widen and he sucks in a harsh breath, his eyes searching hers, but that’s all it takes.

He surges forward into her, Lydia pulling her hand back and wrapping it around his shoulders as he presses his clothed cock—now rapidly on its way to fully hard—against her stomach. There’s no getting around the fact that she’s smaller than him—smaller than them both, and Lydia spares a brief moment to wonder where Stiles is—but Derek just gets one arm looped underneath her ass and lifts her effortlessly up onto the bathroom counter. The new position means that when he slides his arm up and pulls her into him, the hard length of him presses right against the core of her and she gasps, her head falling back.

Derek takes advantage to bury his face in her neck, stroking his tongue over her pulse point and then sealing his lips around it, beginning to suck a mark there. Lydia doesn’t stop him, knows what seeing the small bruises on hers and Stiles’ necks does to him, just threads a hand through his hair and crosses her legs behind his back, pulling him in tighter against her. He still has his sweatpants on and she’s still wearing a thin pair of cotton panties, but the friction and heat is maddening and she circles her hips, feels him twitch against her.

In the next instant she hears his hands slam down on the counter away from her, a muted _screech_ as his nails—his _claws_ —drag on the granite, Derek turning his face away from her neck to pant _fuck_ into her shoulder. Lydia feels a fierce grin take her mouth—Derek losing control of his shift is an incredibly rare thing, rare enough and immensely satisfying enough that both she and Stiles try and push him there as relentlessly and as frequently as possible—and she drops a hand to slip it underneath his shirt, scratch at the dip of his spine, and lets herself moan in pleasure and delight when it causes his hips to jerk even harder against her.

“The two of you have no self-preservation instincts, I swear,” Derek mutters, his hands—fully human once more—wrapping carefully around her hip-bones.

The first time he’d lost control of the shift in bed with her and Stiles it’d taken them nearly an hour of steadying, gentle touches to calm him down, make him relax back into the sheets after he’d tried to lunge out of it, Stiles stopping him at the last moment with what could only be called a tackle. Even still it’d been Stiles who’d finally broken Derek’s resolve; he’d taken Derek’s hand—human then, too—and brought Derek’s fingers to his mouth, had slowly licked and sucked his way around each nail, each knuckle, until Derek had finally groaned and rolled Stiles underneath him, buried himself back inside Stiles and had fucked him fast and hard until they’d both come, Derek’s clawed hands planted on either side of Stiles’ head. Afterwards he’d laid panting on his back, eyes an icy blue and his teeth just slightly too long to be human, and had watched as Lydia had pushed Stiles back and worked him until he was hard again, then taken him, one hand covering Derek’s on her hip when he reached forward for her, seeking a connection.

But now his hands stay stubbornly human, and when Lydia drags his mouth back to hers and licks her tongue against his teeth, they’re blunt. Derek snorts an amused laugh against her mouth at her disappointed sound and leans forward harder against her, holding her up with one arm wrapped around her back, the other slipping between their bodies until he can run his fingers slightly over the damp fabric of her panties, feel the heat there. He groans and presses his face hard against the side of hers, then sits back up—pulling her with him—and drops both hands to her hips, underneath her shirt, until he can wrap both hands around her panties and pull them down and off.

He goes to press back forward but Lydia stops him, squeezing his hips with her knees; she’s not actually strong enough to keep him from moving forward but Derek is always so carefully attuned to them that he halts immediately. Lydia turns her face, kisses the line of his jaw, just underneath his ear, and slides her hands down until she can slip them inside his sweats, his briefs, pull them down and over the curve of his ass, his cock. Derek lets them fall and takes advantage of their brief pause to get his hands curled around the hem of her shirt, pull it up and off.

He stops and looks at her once he’s tossed it away, his eyes heavy-lidded, the hunger she’d noticed earlier still present but muted some, less desperate. She smiles at him and reaches forward to cup his face with one hand, stroke her thumb over his cheek; he turns into it and presses a kiss to her palm, then leans forward and takes her mouth again. They kiss for a few long minutes, some of their earlier urgency transmuting into a slow, steadier kind of _want_. But Lydia still has Derek’s hips between her thighs and Derek’s chest just inches from her own, and the fire burning low in her belly starts to grow again.

Derek must feel it in the twitch of her muscles or the smell of her, because he bites off a noise and pulls back—a little too quick, a little too fast to be fully human, Lydia’s lips flickering in a pleased smirk—and strips his shirt off, then drops both arms to her waist and pulls her in hard against him. Lydia gasps at the feeling and wraps her arms around his shoulders, clenches her legs tight around his back and meets him move for move as he grinds against her. She’s so lost in the sensation, the deliciously-ratcheting up tension, that she nearly misses it when he takes one hand away from her, almost doesn’t hear the sound of him ripping open one of the nearby drawers and rooting around in it.

But when she feels his shoulder flex underneath her arms as he pulls his hand back out of the drawer, she drops one hand and takes the condom package that he’d retrieved, brings it back up behind his back so that she can use her other hand to tear it open. She lets the packaging fall to the ground and brings the condom back down with one hand, cups Derek’s hard cock with the other and gives it a few strokes, deliberately smearing the precome that he’d been steadily leaking down and around him. Derek pants against her hair, his hands once more on the counter—she can’t tell if they’re clawed again—while he holds himself still, practically vibrating with tension, while she gets the condom placed over the head of his cock and then rolls it down.

“Lydia, jesus,” He grits out and Lydia smirks, leans up to take his mouth as she brings her hands back up to his shoulders, deliberately tightens her legs around his back.

Derek takes it for the invitation—for the _order_ —that it is, gets his hands on her hips to yank her to the edge of the counter, then takes one hand away to wrap it around himself, position himself at her entrance. He shudders as he starts to press inside and Lydia closes her teeth around his shoulder, biting back a cry. The feeling of her teeth in his skin must get to him because he makes a desperate noise and his hips jerk forward, fully seating him inside her. They stay like that for a few long seconds, Lydia adjusting to the stretch and fullness of having him inside, and then Derek noses at her cheek, the line of her jaw; asking permission.

In answer, Lydia drops her hands as low on his back as she can and then deliberately rakes her nails _hard_ up his shoulders until she can wrap her hands around the back of his neck; Derek gives a muted snarl in response—Lydia can tell that his eyes have flared blue because she can see it in the reflection of the stainless steel towel rack—and surges forward against her. He starts to move, and move relentlessly, his hands holding her hips steady as he fucks her. Lydia holds onto him and lets him hear every gasp, every moan, knows from experience and the way it makes him redouble his efforts that the sounds get to him.

She knows neither of them are going to last long, both too strung-out from the insanity of the night, and so she hitches her thighs up higher around Derek’s waist, the movement changing the angle just enough that Derek’s cock drags against her clit on every thrust. The added stimulation causes her to tighten around him and Derek buries his face in her neck, whines against the curve of her throat. Lydia buries her hands in his hair, presses her aching breasts hard against the flat planes of his chest, and comes, mouth open on a silent cry as she arches against him. She’s still in the midst of her climax when she feels Derek stiffen against her, his fingers digging bruises into her hips and his cock twitching as he follows her over after a few more thrusts.

They stay pressed against each other for a long few minutes, Derek turning his head until he can catch her lips, press sloppy, sated kisses against her mouth. Lydia returns them, stroking her fingers gently down his back, over and over as the tension steadily drains away from his muscles and he slumps more and more against her.

Eventually she pulls back from him and smiles when he looks up at her, his head resting against her shoulder. Then movement in the doorway catches her attention and she glances up, catches Stiles watching them with a broken-open expression, affection and heat and awe written all over his face, his mouth slightly open as he stares at them curled around each other. He’s hard in his sweatpants, a wet patch already darkening the front of the material, and Lydia wonders how long he’s been standing there, why he didn’t come join them like he usually would.

Stiles catches her eyes and either the thought is plain on her face or he knows her well enough at this point to divine it, because he gives her a shaky smile and says, “You two look unbelievable together. It’s like watching some real-life painting, it’s unreal.”

Lydia feels a slight flush come to her cheeks—and seriously, she doesn’t understand Stiles’ ability to get so effortlessly and so far underneath her composure—even as she feels Derek starting to pull back from her. She makes a small noise when he pulls away enough that he slips out of her, his hand going to catch the condom and strip it off so that he can throw it into the nearby trash can. He leans forward and kisses her forehead, and her brow furrows as she feels the muscles in his arms flex underneath her grip as he reaches back into the drawer. Then he straightens and reaches up to retrieve one of her hands, presses something into it. He looks down at her with a sated, satisfied smile and she wraps her fingers around the condom package, her brow smoothing out, smiles up at him and doesn’t protest when he moves back.

“I’m mildly impressed you didn’t say something about porn, there,” Derek finally comments in reply to Stiles’ earlier characterization; it’s meant as a distraction, one that she’s meant to take advantage of, and Lydia does.

She slides off the counter, her thighs and core aching pleasantly, and starts to pad slowly over to Stiles, his eyes darting to her and locking on her face even as he raises one hand and flips Derek off behind her. He has some idea of what’s coming, Lydia can see it in his eyes, the way that his chest starts to heave as his pulse kicks up, and she gets her hands on his shoulders—knows he can feel the bite of the condom packaging even through his thin shirt—and starts to walk him backwards. Stiles goes, tripping some over his own feet, his hands coming up to rest lightly on her hips.

“I’m serious, watching the two of you, sometimes I can’t believe—” Stiles says, picking up where he’d left off even as his knees hit Derek’s mattress and he’s forced to sit as they collapse.

There’s a flare of frustration in Lydia’s chest at Stiles’ words, his not-so-hidden bout of insecurity. It’s not that Stiles doesn’t have confidence in himself or his own worth, his qualities, but he sometimes falls back into old, bad habits of putting her—and Derek, too—back up on pedestals, out of his reach. She doesn’t want to be idolized, least of all by Stiles, who’s one of the only people who’s ever really given her permission to just _be_ , without all the pressures that—granted—are mostly self-inflicted. But she swallows back the first comment that she wants to make and just strokes the back of her knuckles against Stiles face when he lays back flat at her urging, as she settles over his hips, smiles softly at him instead; she has better ways to prove her point.

She leans down to kiss him, moans quietly when he licks into her mouth and brings his hands up to trace lightly over her sides, cup her breasts. His thumbs catch her nipples, circling lightly, and she cries out, has to turn her face away to pant against his shoulder. Even with the pleasant throb at her core that she can still feel from Derek, she finds herself suddenly desperate for Stiles, leans back up—the condom left momentarily on the bedspread—so that she can get her hands in Stiles’ shirt, start rolling it up and off him. He sits up to let her finish stripping it off, catches her mouth and stays sitting up as he kisses her deeply, his hips—still clothed—moving against her in rhythmic little jerks.

“Please, Lydia, please,” He murmurs against her mouth, and she gets her hands in his hair, clenches them as she kisses him back fiercely.

The touch of Derek’s hand on her back startles her enough that she breaks away, and he murmurs an apology and presses a kiss against her shoulder, while Stiles takes advantage to drop his head, mouth at the tops of her breasts. But Derek doesn’t take his hand away, just skims it down her back until he gets to Stiles’ hips cradled in between hers, and Lydia can’t help but smirk. Bless Derek, looking out for them both even here, even now; he gets his hands wrapped in the fabric of Stiles’ sweatpants, his briefs underneath, and Stiles—catching on with a startled moan—releases Lydia so that he can lay back flat, lift his hips—Lydia rising up on her knees with him—so that Derek can strip them off of him.

Lydia settles back down on Stiles’ now bare hips and sucks in a breath at the heated feeling of his skin, slick with a fine layer of sweat. Stiles gasps and bucks up against her, his hands coming up to clench around the tops of her thighs, and Lydia starts to lean forward, reach back for the condom, when Derek catches an arm around her waist and stills her. He presses his face into her hair, his chest against her back, and finishes reaching forward to retrieve the condom instead. When Lydia looks down at Stiles, he’s watching them with that same blown-open expression, and she smiles at him, reaches down to tangle her fingers with his on her thighs.

She can’t see it but she can hear it when Derek gets the condom open, knows that he’s started rolling it down onto Stiles when Stiles’ hips jerk against her. From the way that he’s only able to move half an inch, though, Lydia is willing to bet that Derek had pinned his hips down, first, and the thought sends a bolt of heat through her; she moans and drops her head back onto Derek’s shoulder, squeezes Stiles’ hips between her thighs.

“You’re dragging this out,” She accuses Derek, but there’s a thread of amusement running underneath the heat of her words, and she can feel it when he presses a grin against her shoulder.

But he doesn’t make them wait any longer; he uses the arm he still has around Lydia’s waist to encourage her back to where he wants her, and uses the hand he’d used to roll to condom onto Stiles to hold Stiles’ cock steady for her. Lydia takes one hand from around Stiles’ on her thighs to squeeze it around Derek’s forearm and slowly, slowly, starts to sink down.

Her muscles twinge slightly, already thoroughly worked over, but as she lowers herself further and further onto Stiles, the mild discomfort melts away to be replaced by pure heat and the satisfaction of having Stiles inside her. Once fully seated, she sighs and sags some against Derek behind her, turns her face into his and then opens her eyes to look at Stiles, who’s staring up at them, eyes heavy-lidded and mouth open as he pants.

“You two are going to kill me,” He tells them hoarsely.

“Now that,” Lydia answers, reaching up to pull her hair out of its tie, then leaning forward—Derek’s forearm slowly falling away from her waist—so that she can plant her hands on either side of Stiles’ face, her hair falling like a curtain around them, “would be a damn shame.”

Then she smirks at him and starts to move, starts to circle her hips, and Stiles moans, starts to meet her. She feels the mattress dip when Derek shifts, rolls to the side, which she doesn’t fully understand until Stiles brings his knees up and gets his feet planted; the new position lets him thrust up harder into her. Crying out, Lydia collapses onto Stiles’ chest, keeps moving with him, his hands sliding from her thighs to her hips, Stiles then using his new grips to help raise her up, pull her down harder onto him.

She hears a guttural noise and turns her head, cheek resting on Stiles’ chest, and sees Derek lying next to them, eyes burning blue and his teeth sharp behind his parted lips. Glancing down, she can see his cock is starting to harden again as he watches them and she meets his eyes, smirks, stretches one arm above her head so that she can brace one hand against Derek’s headboard, start pushing back even harder into Stiles’ thrusts.

The increased pressure and pace make Stiles—who was already pretty damn worked up from watching her and Derek—cry out, and his rhythm starts to stutter. Lydia raises up some so she can look at him, meets his eyes and smiles at him, bringing her free hand down to trace lightly over his features. And that’s it, that seems to do it—the gentle touch on top of the frantic movements of their hips—and Stiles stiffens and arches up, his fingers spasming around her hips as he drags her down onto him and holds her there as he comes. But even in the midst of his climax he’s still thinking of her, one of his hands slipping from her hip so that he can press his thumb over her clit, circling once, and Lydia gasps and feels her own pleasure crest, collapses down onto Stiles’ chest as it overtakes her.

She lays there panting on top of him, feeling Stiles’ chest heaving underneath her as he struggles to get his breath back, too. She groans, her thighs and core still lit up with a pleasant burn, and rubs one of her thumbs against Stiles’ shoulder in a sort of warning. Then she reaches down to hold the condom down and slowly shifts so that Stiles’ slips out of her. She’s in the midst of trying to work up the motivation to do something about the condom when she feels Derek’s fingers nudging at hers; she gratefully leaves the clean-up to him and just collapses onto her side next to Stiles.

When she looks up at him, he’s watching Derek strip the condom off of him and lean over to throw it away with a dazed expression. But he senses her attention, maybe, because he tips his head to look at her and then grins, leaning forward to catch her mouth for a soft series of kisses. Then he flops back flat and stares up at the ceiling, ignoring Lydia when she props her head up on one elbow, watching him in amusement.

“Dead. I’m dead,” He announces, “You’ve killed me.”

But Lydia just grins and meets Derek’s eyes from where he’s returned to the foot of the bed, kneeling in-between Stiles’ splayed-out legs, a small clear bottle and another condom resting off to the side, “Not yet, we haven’t.”

Stiles turns his head to blink at her owlishly and then jerks to look at Derek, who had reached forward to trail his fingers lightly across one of Stiles’ ankles, his calves. He must spot the lube and condom because he groans and his back arches some, his whole body squirming as he looks at Derek, whose cock is hard and whose eyes are predatory as he watches Stiles react to him. Lydia smirks and catches Stiles’ hand when he flings it out towards her, a patently _Stiles_ way of wanting to be grounded even as his body strains towards Derek.

“Oh god, okay,” Stiles babbles as Derek twists his hand so that he’s gripping Stiles’ leg, can encourage it gently open so that Derek can slide even closer, Derek’s other hand already wet with lube, “This is the end, but what a way to go. Tell my father I loved him.”

They all freeze, Derek’s expression twisting with a mixture of disbelieving irritation and reluctant amusement—a fairly typical mix when he’s with Stiles—as Stiles’ poorly-timed joke hovers. Stiles’ eyes are wide as he stares up at Derek, who stares back at him, and they both look so comically pole-axed that Lydia can’t help it, she turns and buries her face in the sheets as she starts helplessly laughing.

“Really?” Derek finally demands, moment broken some by Lydia’s muffled laughter, “You had to say that _right now_?”

“Yeah, in hindsight, that was really poor wording,” Stiles mutters, cheeks aflame when Lydia tips her head to look at him, and she cracks up again, buries her face back in the sheets.

But she feels the mattress shift and when she looks up, still shaking with helpless giggles, Derek has abandoned all pretenses of subtlety and just hauled Stiles into his lap, Stiles’ legs splayed wide around his hips. Lydia’s breath catches as the unintentional humor burns up, away, replaced by the fierce heat in Derek’s gaze as he holds Stiles’ eyes and slowly presses a finger inside him. Stiles moans and his hands clench—one still clasped around Lydia’s, one clutched around a fistful of sheets—and one of his feet drags across the sheets, the other digging into Derek’s back, if the way Derek sucks in a sharp breath and rocks with the movement is anything to go by.

She watches as Derek carefully opens Stiles up—one finger, then two, then three, Stiles crying out and rocking with him—a lazy sort of arousal curling in her belly. But she’s content just to lay still and keep hold of Stiles’ hand, his fingers clutching and releasing hers frantically as he tries to distract himself, some, as he watches Derek finally pull his fingers free and reach for the condom. A few moments later and Derek has slicked himself up, lined himself up with Stiles’ entrance and started to press slowly inside.

“Oh god, Derek,” Stiles moans as Derek continues pressing deeper, stopping only when his hips are flush with Stiles’; Stiles’ grip around Lydia’s hand tightens nearly to the point of pain but Lydia just strokes her fingers over his soothingly, leans over to press a gentle kiss to his shoulder.

She looks up at Derek, whose eyes are fixed on the place where her lips meet Stiles’ skin, and Lydia smiles a molasses-slow smile. Then she very slowly, very deliberately, opens her mouth and closes her blunt, human teeth around the meat of Stiles’ shoulder, her eyes never leaving Derek’s. It’s a challenge, and from the way Derek’s eyes widen and then go narrow, he recognizes it.

He recognizes it and acts on it, sitting back and pulling Stiles up with him so that Stiles is sprawled over his lap; Lydia releases his hand as they go and Stiles immediately wraps his arms around Derek’s back, gasping. Lydia knows from both experience and the wild cry Stiles gives how deep the position lets Derek get, and she smirks as Derek starts to move, one hand cupped around the back of Stiles’ head to hold him in place as Derek mouths at his neck, the other slung low around Stiles’ waist to help Derek move him harder against his own hips.

“Jesus, Lydia, what’d you do to him?” Stiles still manages to pant out even as his voice cracks on a moan, his whole body shuddering as Derek fucks up into him.

Lydia just smiles a captured-canary smile and brings one foot up until she can get it braced on Stiles’ thigh, feels the powerful clench-and-release of it as Stiles rises with Derek’s guiding hands, lets Derek drag him back down, “Why, you complaining?”

“No, nope, no,” Stiles pants out, dropping one hand from around Derek’s back to take hold of her foot, his thumb stroking over the bump of her ankle.

Lydia laughs quietly at his response, flexes her captured foot, watches as Derek pulls back from Stiles’ neck—red from Derek’s mouth and his stubble—and kisses him instead. She thinks of what Stiles had said earlier about her and Derek, _you two look unbelievable together_ , and thinks he doesn’t know the half of it; the sight of them together, moving so perfectly in-sync…

She feels a dull throb of arousal but there’s no urgency to it, not after already having had them both. Instead she keeps her eyes focused on them, on the way that Derek suddenly tips Stiles backward so that he has Stiles’ underneath him, Stiles moaning and his hands slapping down to the sheets to anchor himself as Derek’s powerful thrusts rock him. Stiles turns his head towards her and his expression is pleading so she gets her legs underneath her, shifts some until she can kiss him. She feels Derek’s forehead press against her temple and smiles, tilts her head up so he can kiss her, too.

Then she leans back, and she’s just in time to see Stiles’ expression go blown-open and then pleasure slack as he comes. Stiles’ climax is apparently enough to push Derek over the edge, too, because he buries his face in Stiles’ neck with a desperate noise and his hips jerk once, twice, before pressing in hard against Stiles and staying there.

After a few long seconds Stiles goes boneless, his arms and legs dropping away from Derek with an exaggerated groan. Derek pulls back from him carefully, reaching down to catch the condom, then slides out of bed to dispose of it just as Lydia leans carefully over Stiles and strokes her fingers over his face, smiling at him when he looks up at her.

“Dead,” He repeats, but he’s grinning widely, and he brings one of his hands up to tug gently on a lock of her hair.

“You’re pretty talkative for a corpse,” Derek points out as he reappears, his weight once again dipping the mattress as he kneels on it.

He’s got a washcloth in hand that he carefully runs over Stiles’ thighs, his spent cock, Stiles jerking with a whine. Lydia smiles up at him when he presses himself up against her back, reaches down to run the warm washcloth over her thighs as well. He kisses her quickly and then disappears again, probably to go drape the washcloth back over one of the towel racks in the bathroom.

Lydia looks down at Stiles and sees he’s already got his eyes closed, his breathing starting to even out, the sex on top of his preexisting exhaustion serving to knock him right out. Her chest once against fluttering with affection, Lydia nudges him and tells him to get under the covers; California in December may not exactly qualify as _wintry_ , but Derek’s apartment is practically one, big, nearly-impossible-to-heat brick box, and it gets—already is—chilly. Stiles grumbles in displeasure but wrestles the covers out from underneath himself until he can slide under them. He’s asleep within seconds.

Lydia snorts a laugh and shakes her head lightly, then glances up when Derek comes back out of the bathroom. He smiles at her and comes forward to take her head in his hands, kisses her slow and lingering. Then he glances at Stiles already passed out over her shoulder and smirks.

“That didn’t take long,” He comments dryly.

Lydia just smiles and kisses him once more, then scoots up until she can get her legs under the covers as well, start to slide down. Stiles’ mumbles something as he’s jostled but doesn’t wake up, just snuffles some against his pillow and then settles back down. When Lydia looks up at Derek, about to ask if he’s coming, Derek has a strange look on his face, his expression cracked open as he watches them.

Lydia studies him for a few long seconds and then she gets a hand around the edge of the covers, lifts them up so that Derek can slide into the space they’ve left for him; the space where he belongs.

“Come to bed, Derek,” She tells him, her own voice already going raspy as sleep starts to overtake her.

But she’s still half-awake when Derek finally climbs into bed beside her, when he presses up against her and reaches forward to get one hand wrapped firmly around Stiles’ hip on her other side.

\---

Lydia wakes up some time later as Derek gently disentangles himself from her and Stiles, catches Derek’s sleep-rough voice as he answers his phone. She hears him say _Scott_ but not much else, already drifting back off. It isn’t until some unidentified time later, when she feels his weight dip the mattress and he leans over to kiss her forehead lightly, that she comes awake enough to really absorb what’s happening.

“Hey, sorry,” Derek tells her quietly, once he’s realized she’s conscious; Stiles is still dead to the world on her other side, “Scott called, I have to go get Liam from the hospital.”

Lydia can feel her brow furrowing and she mumbles, “Der _ek_ ,” the last syllable dragged out; a protest.

Derek smooths his hand over her forehead, brings it down to cup her face, “I know, but apparently Liam won’t stop pestering his dad about Theo’s status and Dr. Geyer is about to do something drastic.”

That wakes Lydia up and she starts to sit up, “I thought Theo was going to be fine.”

Derek makes a soothing noise and presses her back down to the mattress, “He is. From what Scott said, Liam is bothering his dad because he wants an exact ETA of when he’s doctor-approved to start yelling at Theo for being an idiot.”

_Ah, of course_ , Lydia thinks, laughing quietly. She turns her face into Derek’s hand still cupped around her face and kisses his palm, then lets her neck go boneless again.

“Okay,” She tells him, smiling up at him.

He leans down to kiss her forehead again and then his weight and heat disappear. She drifts for a few minutes but the brief surge of adrenaline from when she’d mistakenly interpreted Derek’s comment to mean something was wrong with Theo keeps her from falling back asleep, and eventually she sighs and sits up. She scoots out of bed—moving carefully, though Stiles sleeps like the dead and doesn’t stir—and goes to retrieve her phone from the pile of her things she’d left in a pile by the bathroom.

She notices the shirt she’d stolen from Derek earlier lying on the floor and snags it, pulls it back on as she pulls her phone out of her bag. As she unlocks the screen as she’s padding back to the bed, she sees a handful of texts from Scott on the group text. Sliding carefully back under the covers, she sits up against the pillows and thumbs open the group text, then selects the first message from Scott.

It’s a short video, just a few seconds of Theo sleeping, lit by the dim light of the room’s single lamp, his heart monitor beeping monotonously and reassuringly in the background. He’s still got the oxygen mask over his face but even in the poor lighting he looks better somehow, less insubstantial. Lydia smiles at the last frame of the image, frozen on her screen, and then swipes to the next one.

All in all Scott has sent four videos of Theo, and in each one Theo looks steadily better, culminating in the last one when the video starts and Theo’s face is free of the mask. Scott flips the camera after a few seconds and quietly explains that his mom and Dr. Geyer had concluded that Theo didn’t need the extra oxygen anymore, and the raw, unfiltered relief in his voice is nearly heartbreaking in its honesty. The video ends and Lydia reaches forward, restarts it, watches it again.

She jumps and nearly fumbles her phone when Stiles suddenly rasps, “Is that Theo?”

Once she’s steadied her phone she turns to glare down at him, but he’s not looking at her; his focus is on the phone in her hands, still showing the last frame of Theo, now oxygen mask free.

“Yeah,” Lydia answers quietly, tilting the screen so he can see it better, “Scott sent some videos.”

Stiles pulls a hand out from under the covers, doesn’t try and take her phone from her, just starts poking at it still in her hands until he can navigate back to the first video. He watches them in order, his smile steadily getting deeper and more pleased as he notices Theo’s continued improvement, too. When the last video ends, he reaches up a hand to ruffle his hair and then tilts his head up to grin at her, his hand landing on her thigh over the covers and giving it a squeeze.

“He’s going to be okay. Theo is going to live,” He tells her, and she flashes back to their argument at the hospital, smiles down at him and runs a fond hand over his face.

“Yeah, he is,” She answers.

Stiles butts his head against her hand, then flops back to look up at her, his eyes almost seeming to glimmer in the streetlight coming in through the loft’s windows as he adds, “You saved him.”

Lydia knows what he means, and why he’s saying it, and she smiles, leans down to kiss him slow and lingering. Then she shifts down some until she can wrap her arm around Stiles’ head and shoulders, rest her head on top of his, press up against him under the covers. She unlocks her phone, gone dark while they’d talked, and restarts the last video, watches with Stiles as Theo breathes easy, as the heart monitor behind his head marks his heartbeats faithfully, as his chest rises and falls; as he lives.

Then she turns her face until she can press the side of her mouth against Stiles’ forehead, hold him close as she says, “ _We_ saved him. All of us.”

Stiles glances up at her, and then he smiles some and looks back down at her phone, reaches forward and restarts the video, watches in it in silence with her again.

“Yeah, okay,” He finally says, looking up to meet her eyes, his own crinkled up with his wide smile,  “We all saved him.”

**Author's Note:**

> Edited to say: I have tumblr now! If you liked, consider a [reblog](https://eneiryu.tumblr.com/post/182479701580/writing-letters-home-from-delphi-eneiryu-teen).


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